Kerala - Kochi   

Cooperative meet begins today

Kochi: Curtains will go up on the sixth Cooperative Congress here on Friday with Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar inaugurating the event on the Marine Drive in the morning.

Cooperation Minister G. Sudhakaran will preside over the function and Leader of the Opposition Oommen Chandy will deliver the keynote address. Fisheries Minister S. Sarma will deliver the message for the Cooperative Congress.

The Cooperative Congress is the highest forum and policy-making body of the Kerala cooperative movement which has about 25,000 cooperative institutions as its members. It is convened by the Kerala State Cooperative Union on behalf of the Kerala Cooperative Movement with support from the State government and cooperative institutions in the State. The first Kerala Cooperative Congress was convened in Kottayam in 1966. The fifth one was held in Thiruvananthapuram in April 1999.

The major objectives of the Cooperative Congress include suggestion of appropriate changes to the Kerala Cooperative Societies Act and Rules and submission of these formulations to the government.

The Cooperative Congress will also discuss adoption of measures to strengthen cooperative banks so that they can resist the entry of multinational and foreign banks and the impact of globalisation. The other topics to be discussed at the Congress are the impact of various committee reports on the cooperative sector, lack of professionalism in the sector, problems faced by the coir, handloom and fisheries cooperatives.

Discussions on strengthening cooperative education in the State and suggestions on starting more cooperative professional colleges are also expected at the three-day event.

In the session immediately after the inauguration there will be a discussion on the Vaidyanathan Committee report.

The post-lunch session will see a large number topics being discussed after presentations by eminent personalities. The session will be chaired by Aryadan Mohammed, MLA, and Communist Party of India (Marxist) State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan will inaugurate it.

M.L. Khurana, Managing Director, National Cooperative Housing Federation, will speak on cooperative housing for the urban poor. M.G. Banga, Chief Executive Officer, Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IIFCO), will speak on fertilizer subsidy. Sheela Shenoy, head, Finacle Support, Infosys, will speak on the role of information technology in the development of banks. Bhavarpuri, Chief General Manager of NABARD, Kerala, will speak on professionalism in the cooperative sector and eradication of corruption.

The cooperative movement in the country and agriculture lending and strengthening of the poor in the background of the process of globalisation are other topics that will be discussed on Friday.

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